Her husband regarded her with amused interest.
“You would strike your little Italian stiletto into Murchison’s reputation,” he said.
CHAPTER XV
There is little that is beautiful in death, save, perhaps, in the faces of children, and those taken in the heyday of their youth. As in life the majority of mortals are ugly and grotesque, so in death the body grows in repulsiveness as it nears the grave. The lily corpse with the angelic smile is rarely seen, save perhaps by irresponsible poets. Blotched and stiff, shrunken or inflated, the nameless thing welcomes putrefaction and decay. Beauty of outline is lost to the limbs, the bones show at the joints, the muscles stand out in stiff and unnatural relief. Nothing but the glamour of sentiment preserves this ruined tabernacle of the flesh from being designated as a “carcass.”
At Boland’s Farm the house had that sickly and indescribable smell of death. Farmer Baxter’s bullocks grazed peacefully in the great fourteen-acre lot to the east of the garden; the hens clucked and scratched in the rickyard; the pigs sucked and paddled in the swill. The laborers were at work as though their master was still alive to curse them across fields and hedgerows. The soil pays no heed to death; it is a natural occurrence; only we human beings elevate it into an incident of singularity and note. The farm-hands who passed through the yard cast curious and awed looks at the darkened windows of the house. Mrs. Baxter had given them their orders, and they knew there would be no shirking where that lady was concerned.
A couple of traps were standing before the garden gate, and in the death-chamber two intent figures bent over the bed that had been drawn close to the open window. The sun shone upon the body, a mere mountain of flesh, loathsome, gaping, flatulent, lying naked from loins to chin. In death this carcass seemed to dishonor all the higher aspirations of the race. A myriad organisms were usurping the tissues that had worked the will of what men call “the soul.”
Dr. Brimley, of Cossington, a little, spectacled cherub of a man, held back the yellow flaps of fat-laden skin while his confrère groped and delved within the cavity. There was a wrinkle of disgust about Parker Steel’s sharp mouth. He had never vanquished that loathing of contact with the nauseous slime of death. The cold and succulent smoothness of the inert tissues repelled his cultured instincts. Yet even the superfine sneer vanished from about his nostrils as he drew out a black and oozing object from the dead man’s body.
“Good God, Brimley, look at this!”
The spectacled cherub peered at it, puckered up his lips and gave a whistle.
“A sponge!”